Archives for August 2020

Thursday August 13, 2020

80 Days until the election on November 3^rd

160 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

Okay, we got the VP pick. Several points:

1 – She used the term “flip flop” about Trump and Pence in her opening speech. (I love it.)

2 – Earlier when asked about her attacking Biden during the debate, she laughed and said, “That’s politics.” (Yeah. Doesn’t mean you can’t still be friends.)

3 – I love seeing how the right is trying to figure out how to attack her: “too liberal,” “authoritarian,” … Wait? What? Are you trying to have it both ways? (Ask Brent Kavanaugh about that!) 

4 – A black woman guest on one of the news shows said she wanted to see Kamala debate Mike, that is she said, “if his wife would give him permission to do so.”

The last point makes me wonder if anyone can imagine Kamala standing behind Joe with that fawning dopey look that Pence has everytime he’s behind Trump.

Speaking of Trump, if anyone had any reservations about whether this man would steal the election if he can, you no longer need think about it anymore. He will if he can. There is no longer any doubt. His hand picked Postmaster General is busy dismantling the post office before our very eyes. Local Republican officials are helping out too. The Republican Secretary of State for Ohio says that there can only be one ballot drop box per county. Why? Who knows. It ain’t like it’s a law. He just made it up. Meanwhile, the Postmaster General has decreed that ballots will be treated as bulk mail, not first class. This means they will throw them out if they can’t find the person to whom it is addressed. They also are no longer keeping track of ballot counts in a log (ie the least amount of tracking one can do to make sure stuff isn’t lost, But hey, who wants you to keep track if you’re possibly grinding up thousands of ballots?)

Our form of government is being attacked. It is a full frontal assault. It is from within, and it is coming from the top. If you think it’s bad now, in four more years there will be nothing left. Do not be complacent. Do not say you can worry about it tomorrow. To quote the Beatles, “Tomorrow Never Comes.”

Both the Senate Democrats and The House Democrats have sent letters to the Postmaster General to explain his actions. When I heard this I thought, “That’s cute. I’m sure when he gets those letters he’ll jump for joy and say to himself, ‘It is working!’ “

The only thing the bully in The White House understands is force. He will break every rule, every norm, ever custom. Unless he is forcefully stopped. 

Personally, I like the concept that “No one is above the law.” I’d like to see him arrested, shackled and taken out of the White House – right now. No need to wait. Seems that the Federal Justice Department won’t step up and do it. Maybe, New York? Next time he stops by. Don’t worry about Barr, he can claim he wasn’t aware of it. Don’t worry about Mike. We can put a dummy at a lectern with a Donald wig on; tell Mike to stand behind and to one side. Play old Trump speeches and that will keep him busy until after Inauguration. 

Saw a guy in Lowe’s today. No mask, white t-shirt that read “Tea Party.” So surprised.

80 Days until the election on November 3^rd

160 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS It’s an old sign.

Wednesday August 12, 2020

81 Days until the election on November 3^rd

161 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

This is a grab bag of stuff and I’m not sure where to start but I was thinking about Strunk and White. They wrote a book called “Element of Style.” It’s a classic in the grammar and punctuation crowd. It’s not very big, but folks alway refer to it. One of the things they say to do in your writing is to pick the proper word, be precise. When I first read those words I said to myself, “Yeah, okay. Whatever.” But now, I’ve come to appreciate those words more and more. 

I think one example they gave was something like this: don’t use “go into” when you could write “enter.” Is it a big deal? Do people know what you mean? Sure. But we have a beautiful language, use it. 

This reminds me of Sarah Cooper’s assessment of Trump’s manner of speaking. She said he is really talking to himself most of the time, in a kind of feedback loop. It seems he really doesn’t know when he starts a sentence what he is going to say, or how he is going to finish it. But once he has said it; he believes it. He repeats what he says as if to reinforce it in his mind.

Alex Baldwin said of his imitating Trump that Donald seemed like he was looking for the right word, and not finding it, picked another word, and then repeated the word or phrase. As if that would make it better.

I’ve noticed, and I’m sure others have too, that Trump has certain stock phrases that he uses in most situations. The phrases have no real meaning and could apply to any situation. “A lot of people are saying…” for instance. 

There is a lack of specificity in most of what he says. 

And then I think about the coaching phrase, “I want you to give one hundred and ten percent.” Okay great. What does that mean? ( “I want you to try.”? , “I want you to try real hard.”? )

How much can a person give? The sum total is really 100%. Therefore if you take that amount and call it 110% you have in fact devalued the original 100%. So the old 100% is the new about 90%. Great. But we all know what the coach means so we let it slide. Besides when the coach is all fired up and spitting through his mask at you to get you excited to do the best you can is probably not a good time to bring up the finer point that no one can do 110%. 

But this kind of thing goes on all the time. We see it in grading and we have a name for it “grade-flation.” 

The problem with such inflation is that it cheapens the value of what came before. I’ve seen it with awards too. 

When I saw president Trump putting The Medal of Freedom around the neck of Rush Limbaugh I thought of all those deserving people who had come before him who had been awarded that medal. Now? Who would want it, now that it had been sullied in that fashion?

But this trend seems to be inevitable in so many things. Some people call it “progress.” But progress is different. It’s the idea that as things change they have improved somehow. If they haven’t improved then it’s not progress, but the same-old/same-old.

I also have seen the calls to re-introduce classes like civics, shop, music, home-ec, phys-ed and art. I’d include such subjects as ping-pong, juggling, and wooden puzzle solving. Such activities have been shown to use other parts of ones brain and lead to making one a better rounded person. So does poetry, and music, and painting and sculpting and getting out and running around.

I went to private school from the sixth grade until I graduated high school. One thing private schools did was have everyone play a sport. It didn’t matter if you were good. It mattered that you were part of the team, and you did what you could. I’d like to see more of that attitude in the public schools. No try-outs, no cuts, Everyone plays. It’s not the winning so much as it is the playing, being part of a team. I remember practicing a play in football, a sweep. It’s a complicated maneuver. The guards, (the players on either side of that ball being hiked) have to simultaneously “pull.” That means as soon as the ball is hiked they don’t charge forward to block their man, but rather step back and run to one side of the men on their team lined up on the line of scrimmage. So as the Tackle and the End on the side where the play is coming are blocking their men, the Guards are running behind them. 

While the Guards were “pulling” the Quarterback has gotten the ball, stepped back to allow the Guard on the side where the play is not going to run by him. As the QB stepped back he’s “pivoted” (ie turned) to hand the ball off to a back that is passing by him from behind. 

Depending on the backfield formation there may be another two backs involved, also running to that side of the field where the play is going.

The idea is to overload the side of the field so that the other team runs out of players to stop your advance, and the man with the ball can break free and go for a touchdown or big yards before being forced out of bounds.

A sweep requires everybody on the team act in concert and do precisely what needs to be done at the exact instant it needs to be. From the time the play starts to when the Guards pull and begin their run is a few seconds. When it works it is a thing of beauty. The whole team moves as one. The Center and the Tackles and the Ends surge off the line as the Guards step back. They begin their run to the side. The Quarterback has pivoted holding the ball out for the Back coming across and then there is the wild scramble as the opposing team tries to “contain” the play not letting the ball carrier get around them to the outside. Meanwhile Linebackers (those on the defensive side right behind their linemen) are either running to the side to head off the ball carrier or they are trying to “shoot a gap” to make it through the surging line of scrimmage and the pulling Guards who are now running parallel to the field of play so they can trip up or tackle the ball carrier.

It requires precision. It requires that everyone do their job. 100% on the split second.

To be part of that effort, when it works, builds an unspoken bond. You understand something you didn’t before. It’s a zen-like thing. 

We, as a nation, need some of that zen-like concerted effort moving together as one.

81 Days until the election on November 3^rd

161 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS The view from my window*.

*No, not now. April 2016, Costa Rica. I was on a mission. More later.

Tuesday August 11, 2020

82 Days until the election on November 3^rd

162 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

My birthday is August 10^th and my grade school friend Charlie has his on August 11^th.

My mom says I was born about 10:30 at night.

My draft number was 21 and Charlie’s was 324. What a difference 90 minutes makes.

Now? Who remembers all that? 

Where have all the flowers gone?

Now, we are facing new threats and fears.

The corona virus, the worst economic collapse in history of our country is looming, a president with authoritarian, not tendencies, but actions. Authoritarian actions. That is something I hope we can all understand and do what we can to protect this democracy, this unique “experiment,” as historians call it.

Historians also call democracies as transitional times in history that don’t last very long, maybe 200 years at best. Our time is up.

Unless.

Unless, we do something.

The thing with Trump is that he is doing things right in front of our face and some folks don’t believe it. Others say there’s nothing we can do and others complain. Others fight.

The death of democracy is complacency. It’s interesting to me that some have been posting quotes from Frank Zappa about the Constitution and how schools used to teach civics and replaced it with social studies. Frank asked how are you going to stand up for something if we were never taught about it? Kind of like the people who post things about putting shop or home ec or music back in schools. All good things.

I have learned more about civics and the Constitution in the last three and a half years than in the rest of my life. Why? Because I had to.

You don’t have to, but then I’ll point out two data points from history. One was the end of the Roman Republic. What caused it to end? The simple fact that those who were alive during its demise didn’t believe it could happen because it had always been there for them. Until it wasn’t.

The other parallel is Hitler’s rise to power. I remember reading about it while in middle school. What I remember most was that Hitler used the levers of power and means of government to take more and more control. Once he was in charge he abolished those means. Or as my friend Martin said about his grandparents who grew up in Germany in the 1930s. “We all knew he was crazy, but when we decided to act, it was too late.”

Don’t be too late this time.

With Trump’s numbers slumping in the polls the only way he can win is to cheat. Fortunately, for him, he’s in a party where cheating has become, like himself, a way of life. He has taken it to new heights, and I wonder if or when some in his party are going to say, “Hey, wait a minute.” Trump has made frontal assaults on every government institution we have. The last bastion is the intelligence community, which he has been busy decapitating.  He has already done it to the Justice Department and has attacked the scientific community. He has been using Federal agents to incite riots in our streets and tested throwing people in cages or unmarked vans for no reason. He is busy trying to make sure the Census undercounts people whom he believes won’t vote for him. Likewise, he has installed a person to head the Post Office to slow down the mail system so that we won’t be sure if our mail-in ballots are counted. It’s a stunning all out assault on our institutions and way of life.

Don’t be complacent. Don’t be fooled. Do what you can to protect our values, our commonly held democratic values of this republic.

82 Days until the election on November 3^rd

162 Days until the Inauguration on January 20, 2021

PS Ready to make some salsa?